They said: “Mick said that he wished there had been something like B Sharp around for him when he was young and that every town needed it.

“Mick added there’s nothing like learning through playing together and that he was lucky when he was young because his parents let him make music at home.”

Following on from Mr Fleetwood's visit, Mr Griffiths spent the day with B Sharp during his tour of the South West, where he is visiting projects and organisations the foundation supports.

The foundation is known for investing in music-making projects for children and young people, particularly those facing challenging circumstances, and it has supported B Sharp's for many years.

Mr Griffiths observed one of B Sharp's sessions with early years children, which are part-funded by a grant from the foundation.

He said: “I heard very personal accounts of how B Sharp provides a welcome, supporting environment. This powerful combination of helping young people progress and social action is at the heart of what B Sharp does.”

B Sharp’s Mr Verhaeren added: “Wow; having two such amazing visits from inspirational people in the music industry in one week is so great for B Sharp. We build the skills, creativity and confidence of young people through music and it’s inspiring for me and the team to see the importance of this being recognised by Mick and Matt”

B Sharp offers all young people from all walks of life the opportunity to make music.

If you are aged between eight and 19 you can sign up to one of the charity's regular music projects in Lyme or Bridport, or go along for a free taster.

MAKING IT IN COMICS WITH A TV ADAPTION OF HEARTHROB: A NYCC INTERVIEW WITH CHRIS SEBELA AND ROBERT WILSON IVOn Hollywood, Fleetwood Mac, and Robert Wilsons I-III.

Tim: What's so dang good about Fleetwood Mac anyway?

Robert: The songwriting, first and foremost.

Chris: I've definitely been obsessed with Fleetwood Mac for several years now, but it's not just the fact that Rumors was the biggest album when it came out. That was the initial inspiration. I liked the idea that we signified the real world by having Rumors be sort of everywhere. That was a thing that became much deeper. One of the things I love about Fleetwood Mac is there's so much interpersonal dynamics behind the scenes. People are sleeping with each other and cheating on each other. People doing drugs. It's like a very weird family. That's what we kind of put together with Heartthrob is giving Callie this very odd family and seeing what happens. People will betray each other.

Robert: There's a lot of repeating themes between the real life Fleetwood Mac story and Heartthrob.

Chris: For sure. I don't know. I just like Fleetwood Mac.

Tim: Did you listen to a lot of Fleetwood Mac when you were drawing?

Robert: Definitely. I tried to soak myself in Rumors specifically, but also stuff from that era. Kind of the stuff that Callie would be listening to. I had Bowie's Low and Heroes both in pretty heavy rotation because they both came out in 1977. A lot of period stuff and a lot of stuff with similar mood.

MAKING IT IN COMICS WITH A TV ADAPTION OF HEARTHROB: A NYCC INTERVIEW WITH CHRIS SEBELA AND ROBERT WILSON IVOn Hollywood, Fleetwood Mac, and Robert Wilsons I-III.

Tim: What's so dang good about Fleetwood Mac anyway?

Robert: The songwriting, first and foremost.

Chris: I've definitely been obsessed with Fleetwood Mac for several years now, but it's not just the fact that Rumors was the biggest album when it came out. That was the initial inspiration. I liked the idea that we signified the real world by having Rumors be sort of everywhere. That was a thing that became much deeper. One of the things I love about Fleetwood Mac is there's so much interpersonal dynamics behind the scenes. People are sleeping with each other and cheating on each other. People doing drugs. It's like a very weird family. That's what we kind of put together with Heartthrob is giving Callie this very odd family and seeing what happens. People will betray each other.

Robert: There's a lot of repeating themes between the real life Fleetwood Mac story and Heartthrob.

Chris: For sure. I don't know. I just like Fleetwood Mac.

Tim: Did you listen to a lot of Fleetwood Mac when you were drawing?

Robert: Definitely. I tried to soak myself in Rumors specifically, but also stuff from that era. Kind of the stuff that Callie would be listening to. I had Bowie's Low and Heroes both in pretty heavy rotation because they both came out in 1977. A lot of period stuff and a lot of stuff with similar mood.

Other oldies “Gold Dust Woman” and “Tusk” are also fantastic additions, both straight from Fleetwood Mac. Where “Rhiannon” is an overtly witch-themed song (that would be an ideal selection for this grouping, if only it weren’t oddly uplifting), “Gold Dust Woman” is about an ordinary gal in a bad relationship, but the song itself feels in some way witchy; the twangs of the guitar make the sound reminiscent of the deadly and desolate nature of a Western, whereas the ominous lyrics of the chorus and Stevie Nicks’ wails later make way for the instrumentals to devour each other over various cries. “Tusk” counterbalances the heavy focus on witchery with a percussion-driven beat that sets the stage for what can only be described as the soundtrack for a tribal sacrifice (made truer by the primal vocals of the chorus). The result, a bit unsettling, is a great fit for the season.

t’s not so much that the crowds at his live shows are getting younger, says Michael McDonald, more that the younger audience members’ reasons for being there appear to have changed. “People who come and meet you afterwards by the bus, it’s usually the younger, more energetic ones, who don’t have to be home to let the babysitter go,” he chuckles. “Typically, they used to say: ‘Oh, my parents played your music all the time,’ like they had been tortured with it in their youth, but somehow came to like it. But now, because of working with Thundercat and Grizzly Bear, and being sampled by hip-hop artists, it’s opened the door a little wider to a different kind of audience.”

McDonald has a typically unassuming explanation for why a boundary-pushing funk auteur and some hip Brooklyn alt-rockers might be keen to work with him, aged 65, having weathered years in which “people thought having to listen to my music was like having to swallow dish detergent”: “If you live long enough, you get further away from the period of time you might be identified with – the 1970s in my case,” he says. “People tend to cut you a lot of slack.”

But it’s more than that: at some point during the 17 years that separate McDonald’s last album of original material from his latest, Wide Open, the wider world learned to stop worrying and love yacht rock, or soft rock, or whatever you want to call the super-smooth, R&B- and jazz-inflected music that he performed, first as a backing vocalist with Steely Dan, then as frontman of the Doobie Brothers, then as a solo artist.

Michael McDonald is quietly delighted with his oeuvre being reassessed.
It is music that is bigger now than at any time since its heyday, which by common consent stretched between 1976, when McDonald joined – and transformed the sound of – the Doobie Brothers, and 1983, when the faceless-but-virtuosic session musicians in Toto swept the board at the Grammys with the 3m-selling Toto IV.

There was a small resurgence in the ecstasy-fuelled Balearic scene of late-80s Ibiza, keen on overturning what DJ and soft rock fan Matthew Hamilton calls “that kind of post-punk stranglehold on taste and what was credible”. But in recent years, its influence has appeared everywhere from dance music to teen pop to rock. After years in which Fleetwood Mac were huge-selling but “incredibly unhip”, as guitarist and vocalist Lindsey Buckingham put it, the sound of their eponymous 1975 album and its 40m-selling follow-up Rumours has become one of latterday pop’s touchstones, its influence audible in the work of everyone from Taylor Swift to Haim, Hot Chip and Phoenix. The Doobie Brothers, Daryl Hall and John Oates, Steely Dan and others are sufficiently reconstructed that they can play London’s cavernous O2 Arena for Bluesfest this weekend.

There are communities online where arguments rage about what does and doesn’t constitute yacht rock – are Steely Dan too acerbic, too New York, too perennially acclaimed to qualify? Are Fleetwood Mac sufficiently smooth and soulful? And there is an entire US radio station dedicated to “smooth-sailing soft rock from the late 70s and early 80s – the kind of rock that doesn’t rock the boat!” There are new bands dedicated to painstakingly recreating the sound – London duo Young Gun Silver Fox, whose 2016 debut album West End Coast offers a succession of lushly beautiful homages – and old artists who have found their careers unexpectedly reactivated. Ned Doheny, a singer-songwriter who released a trio of albums in the 1970s to negligible sales everywhere except Japan, found himself touring the UK and Europe for the first time in 2015 after his albums were reissued, an experience he described as “a life-changer”.

It has also become a growth area for DJs and record collectors. German DJ Marcus Liesenfeld’s Too Slow To Disco compilation is currently on its fourth volume, while Numero Group’s recent Seafaring Strangers: Private Yacht digs even deeper, unearthing tracks from privately-pressed albums by artists so obscure, they make Doheny look like a hopelessly over-exposed household name: “local yokels and underdog guys, yacht rockers who were on less costly vessels”, as compiler Jon Kirby puts it. And there is the AOR Disco website, where the aforementioned Hamilton has spent the last eight years posting an apparently inexhaustible supply of soft rock DJ mixes and re-edits, not all of which have been met with untrammelled delight by the genre’s diehard fans. “There was one remix of I Keep Forgettin’ by Michael McDonald where the remixer had taken off the original drum track by Jeff Porcaro of Toto and put a house beat on it instead,” he says. “That turned out to be the ultimate sacrilege. You don’t mess with Jeff Porcaro’s drumming.”

It’s all very different from the early noughties, when the first artists to start publicly displaying their love of this kind of music were met with a degree of bafflement. Hall And Oates-indebted trio Zoot Woman ploughed a lonely musical furrow; reviews of Phoenix’s 2000 debut seemed unsure whether the French quartet were actually serious or not.

And, initially at least, the resurgence of interest in soft rock did seem to come with a side order of irony. The man who invented the term “yacht rock”, US writer and actor JD Ryznar, is clearly a fan of the music – the podcast he currently co-presents runs a feature called “yacht or nyacht”, which determines the suitability of records for inclusion within the genre – but the Yacht Rock web series he helped devise in 2005 was a parody, lampooning John Oates, McDonald and Kenny Loggins, among others, as preposterous figures.

Still, something about the rebranding of the music that inspired it as yacht rock – an evocative name that posited the music as a soundtrack to a mythic life of sunkissed luxury – seemed to chime with people, bringing it to a new audience. “I think Yacht Rock [the web series] was the beginning of this whole Hall & Oates resurrection,” Oates later remarked. “They were the first ones to start to parody us, and put us out there again.”

Inspiring DJs and collectors to dig in the crates is one thing, but exerting an influence on the sound of mainstream pop is another entirely. On the most prosaic level, soft rock appeals to latterday producers because it is, as Daft Punk’s Thomas Bangalter has said, “the pinnacle of audio fidelity”. There’s also a feeling that the sound acts as a kind of shorthand for musical sophistication: if you’re a former boyband member like One Direction’s Niall Horan, one way of signifying that you have grown is to break out the soft rock influences. As McDonald points out, Steely Dan set a new standard for music that could happily function as pop – they were “all over the radio for years” – without sacrificing its jazz-inspired complexity. “They cast a spell over American pop culture that’s very enigmatic to me, because the music is so sophisticated that I didn’t think it met the criteria of what people thought pop music should be.”

Kirby, meanwhile, has a theory that yacht rock was the sound of rock music entering its 30s. “What I found when researching the artists on Seafaring Strangers was that this was not their first foray into recorded music,” he says. “They had started out playing folk or studying jazz; they had been in R&B bands or soul groups. They forged their songs with a certain maturity, saying: I haven’t made it yet, and I’m still playing music and I’ve got a family and I’m a more mature, potentially complicated person. What music can I create that reflects where I am in my journey?”

And perhaps there’s another reason for its resurgence, that has something to do with the era that we’re currently living through. For Hamilton the music allows for aspirational escapism, to a fantasy past “that could only ever be in your imagination”. The world in 2017 seems a dark place, whereas the mythic, pristine Los Angeles of the 70s and early 80s that yacht rock conjures feels like “a simpler, sunnier time … a break from politics”.

McDonald thinks that might be right, and moreover thinks there’s a parallel with the music’s original intention. “When we came out of the 60s, when pop music had got to be such a revolutionary force, we kind of got nostalgic for the era before that, enamoured of old R&B records. For us, that music was a kind of panacea to thinking: well, has much actually changed, socially, after all that effort in the 60s? In the 70s, we kind of got lulled into an escapism of sorts. Our songs had more chord changes, they were harking back to a more romantic kind of musical experience. Steely Dan wanted to be Duke Ellington’s band, you know?”

Whatever the reason, McDonald is clearly quietly delighted with his oeuvre being reassessed, hailed as an influence by younger artists, and lauded in a way it never was, even during the Doobie Brothers’ heyday. “I still have to remember that I’m the guy driving down the freeway in the passing lane, going 55 with my blinkers stuck on. I’m every bit the 65-year-old guy. But I’ve been given the opportunity to keep rocking and rolling a little longer.”

Bluesfest is at the O2 Arena, London, 27-29 October. Wide Open by Michael McDonald is out now on BMG Records

Vinyl is back, and everyone is looking to capitalise. The latest giant to dip a toe in the market is Sainsbury’s. But they’re going further than just selling classics – or even new releases. The supermarket chain has announced that it will launch its own record label to “ride the wave” of the vinyl revival. Not only that, but the music is curated specifically for customers at the shop, where Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours remains the biggest seller. Its first two records are decidedly retro offerings: Hi Fidelity – A Taste of Stereo Sound will open with Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells and run through a range of 1970s classics from Cat Stevens, Sir Elton John, Moody Blues and more.

California road trips

Coming Into Los Angeles – A Taste of West Coast, meanwhile, will conjure up California road trips with artists including the Mamas and the Papas, The Byrds and the Monkees – along with a cameo from Fleetwood Mac. The Own Label imprint is a collaboration with Universal and Warner Music – of course Sainsbury’s hasn’t signed up Elton John and Fleetwood Mac by itself – and will be available in more than 160 Sainsbury’s superstores. The ’60s and ’70s compilations have been curated by Bob Stanley of indie group Saint Etienne and will cater “specifically to the tastes of Sainsbury’s shoppers”, the supermarket said. While sales of physical music products have deteriorated sharply with the advent of online streaming, there remains a niche market in the UK for vinyl. The so-called UK vinyl revival has seen sales of the format jump 37.6% in the first half of 2017 to £37.3 million.

Vinyl revival

Sainsbury’s began stocking vinyl in March 2016 for the first time since the 1980s and claims to account for almost 70% of the total grocery vinyl market. Sainsbury’s head of music and books Pete Selby said: “Our customers’ love of vinyl shows no sign of abating so, alongside the classics albums, we want to offer our shoppers something they won’t find anywhere else. “Our exclusive Own Label records have been carefully tailored towards the inquisitive, cultured tastes of our customers so we’re confident that they’ll love the sound of our new releases and our ever-increasing vinyl range.” Sainsbury’s has sold almost 300,000 vinyl albums to date, with almost 5% of those going to Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours alone.

Interesting. The only Mac song is Christine's.... didn't we have this convo before where, since she sold her publishing catalog, she no longer has control over how her songs are used (in commercials and whatever) ? So then chances are good whoever she sold the catalog to (Warner's?? does anyone know?) made the decision to include it. And since Stevie and Lindsey still retain at least some control over their publishing, doubtful we will see theirs on here unless Sainsbury's wants to pay a lot of moola.

For every iconic song in the world, there are countless covers in existence. It can be so difficult to put your own spin on a song and stand out, whilst also respectfully paying homage to the original. However, when a cover is done right, it can be an incredibly special moment.

Singer, songwriter and producer Arielle O’Keefe, better known as Girl Blue, recently released her version of Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Dreams’. As one of the band’s most well loved songs globally, it’s a hard task to re-imagine the track however, Girl Blue has delivered the most haunting version which captures the original emotion of the song.

Starting off with a stripped back production, Girl Blue’s breathtaking voice does all of the talking. She has such a captivating tone, it’s hard not to lose yourself in her pitch-perfect vocals. Later on, the track is laced with an electronic vibe, as a hypnotic beat is added to proceedings. This adds a modern element and Girl Blue stamp to the song, which we really love.

We’re not the only ones who are appreciating Girl Blue’s cover either. The track has over 195,000 streams on Spotify and was featured on Spotify USA’s New Music Friday playlist. Speaking about her choice of cover, she said: “Rumours was an album I’d had around as a kid but it hit me really differently as an adult. The album is full of hits, but ‘Dreams’ has always been the quintessential Rumours song for me.”

Yesterday (October 31), Girl Blue unveiled the visual for the song. Directed by Chromoscope Pictures, the eerie video shows the singer in the woods at night, singing incantations over a spell she’s casting. The visual has a gothic vibe, which suits the Halloween release date perfectly.

Speaking about the inspiration behind the visual, Girl Blue said: “I think that visual really leans into the foreboding you’ll regret this side of the lyric, I wanted to channel Stevie and the spirit of the song a la ‘The Craft’ and the ‘The VVitch’’ it was really fun to do.”

Check out the visual for ‘Dreams’ below.

Girl Blue has long been making waves on the music scene thanks to her incredible vocal arrangements and storytelling ability. Her debut EP I Am Not A Star was released earlier this year and received incredible support from Spotify, with lead single ‘Fire Under Water’ being streamed over 2.2 million times. We can expect even more new music from her soon, as she is preparing a new album for release in early 2018.

It's a terrible and expensive mess and gets a C- on the Christmas advert acceptability scale. And it only uses a song that sounds like Christmas without actually being Christmas; Don't Stop by Fleetwood Mac, a song that seems to be about wanting something to stop hurting. A feeling we can all associate with at Christmas time, even in November.

It's a terrible and expensive mess and gets a C- on the Christmas advert acceptability scale. And it only uses a song that sounds like Christmas without actually being Christmas; Don't Stop by Fleetwood Mac, a song that seems to be about wanting something to stop hurting. A feeling we can all associate with at Christmas time, even in November.

Asda Supermarket using Don’t Stop for their Christmas advert.
At first I thought ...no,no,no,no..
But what the heck, we get to here Don’t Stop about four times everyday.
And the advert isn’t THAT bad ...it’s a bit Charlie and the Choc. Factory..

Organisers of the 2017 ARIA Awards have announced the final lineup of Australian performers for this year’s event, along with some of the presenters that will be part of the show at The Star Event Centre, Sydney on Tuesday November 28.

The final round of Australian performers include Apple Music Album Of The Year nominee Paul Kelly, Breakthrough Artist nominee Amy Shark and Best Male Artist nominee Dan Sultan.

Audiences will also be treated to a very special Hall Of Fame performance by the legendary Daryl Braithwaite.

These acts will be joining A.B. Original, Gang Of Youths, Jessica Mauboy, Peking Duk and Pnau on stage this year. Previously announced performers also include Harry Styles and Lorde.

Presenters this year will include world renowned British musician, drummer and co-founder of Fleetwood Mac, Mick Fleetwood, star of 80s super group Culture Club and one of the music scene’s most iconic artists and coach on TV show, The Voice Australia & UK, Boy George, Australian Grammy Award-winner and 12-time ARIA Award-winner Flume, and #1 best selling author for his memoir “Working Class Boy”, Jimmy Barnes. Also presenting are US double-platinum artist and songwriter Julia Michaels and singer-songwriter and two-time 2017 ARIA Award-nominee Vance Joy.

Rockin’ the City of Angels: Celebrating the Great Rock Shows of the 1970s In Concert, On Record, and On Film
By Douglas Harr
396 pp.
Diego Spade Publications
$79.95

This is a book of visual delights, and they are abundant. There’s Alice Cooper in his gory prime dancing with a line of skeletons. Elton John in his sequined L.A. Dodgers uniform. Rick Wakeman of Yes in all his caped glory, surrounded by a circle of keyboards. Jethro Tull’s wildman Ian Anderson fluting away in his signature stork pose while wearing leg tights. And Queen’s Freddie Mercury bare-chested and sporting leather and his own harlequin tights (what was it with tights on lead singers in the ‘70s?)?

In this sizable tome, Harr – who by his own estimate has attended more than 400 live rocks shows – pays tribute to the decade and the city where he saw so many of them.

Combining music journalism, band biography, personal remembrances, and a multi-media guide for further immersion, the book covers a wide variety of acts who graced stage in LA. Scores of them including Rock Gods (Who, Stones, Queen, Zep); Shamans & Storytellers (Genesis, Eagles, Fleetwood Mac…and Ambrosia??); and the Virtuosos of Harr’s beloved Prog Rockers (ELP, Rush, King Crimson, Gentle Giant).

Some of rock’s greatest photographers have their full color work on display here, including Armando Gallo, Neal Preston, Jim Summaria, and Neil Zlozower. And while not budget-priced by any means, this hefty volume would look nice on any coffee table. Rocks Off spoke with Harr from England via email about the book and his particular classic rock journey of the ‘70s.

Rocks Off: What made you decide to do the book?
Harr: I decided to take on the book project after years writing articles for Gonzo Weekly magazine in Britain, covering many of the bands I’d first seen during my formative years in Los Angeles. The chance to focus a book specifically on the fantastic live concerts of the ‘70s backed by the amazing photography of the era inspired me.

Rocks Off: Most images are not from the exact concert you are writing about, but from the era. How did you work with the photographers to find just the right images to convey in pictures what you were trying to do in text?
Harr: I worked with the photographers, sometimes in person, sometimes at a distance, to find the most spectacular shots they captured of each band performing in support of what I see as their best album and tour.

In most cases, I was able to recall the staging, wardrobe and other elements of stagecraft to ensure we had shots from the right concert – in a few cases some extra research was needed to jog my memory! While some are not from the band’s actual date in Los Angeles, they are primarily from the same tour in order to inform and match the text.

Rocks Off: You have a particular affinity for Prog Rock. What about that genre lent itself to the more lavish stage presentations like the Crab Nebula from Yes or Genesis' "Lamb" tour?
Harr: Progressive rock music often incorporates storytelling into its lyrics and imagery. This lends itself to live staging, arguably best realized by Genesis on the Lamb Lies Down on Broadway tour. Often this staging was literal, with films, costumes and other visuals taken literally from the verse. More frequently, it was primarily lighting effects that highlighted the dynamics in the music and the performance, making the whole more exciting and impactful.

Rocks Off: What do you think audiences today miss out on in terms of seeing these acts — many of which still tour today — in their '70s prime?
Harr: Most of the bands in the book still tour, and I’ve seen them again with my wife and friends over the last decade. Most bands are best seen directly after they record their seminal works, and the ‘70s were a special time for the development of rock music, and corresponding elaborate concerts.

Of course, many bands improve over the years. Sometimes one or more of the original musicians are no longer in the band, or remain but are not at peak form, but generally the shows have continued to be amazing. As technology has evolved, some of these artists have actually improved their sound and elements of staging. Roger Water’s more recent performances of The Wall come to mind.

Rocks Off: I you could go back in time and see one concert featured in the book again tonight, which one would it be?
Harr:That’s a tough question! There were so many that stand out for different reasons, but if I had to pick one it would be Jethro Tull’s A Passion Play.

Rocks Off: Finally, do you think that California/L.A. shows have any different vibe - for audience for performers - than, say, any other city?
Harr: L.A. has its own vibe – as much of the recording industry is centered there - I think many bands were particularly focused on giving it their best shot – it was also a popular stop – we were lucky that almost every band that toured in the era booked our town.